A Minnesota man who traveled to Rhinelander looking to have sex with a teenage girl will spend more than 8 years in federal prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin says 38-year-old Creighton Mithaugen was sentenced to 97 months by a federal judge.
From April of 2024 to early 2026, Mithaugen chatted with someone he thought was a 14 or 15-year-old girl.
The chat was actually with an undercover law enforcement agent.
On February 13th of this year, he traveled to a meeting spot in Rhinelander, expecting to meet the girl.
In ordering the 97 month sentence, U.S. District Judge William M. Conley found that a lengthy sentence was necessary to protect some of the most vulnerable members of society from Mithaugen’s predatory behavior.
Mithaugen will be on lifetime supervision once he gets out of prison.
The charge against Mithaugen was the result of an investigation conducted by the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office, the Rhinelander Police Department, the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
This investigation was a part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a nationwide initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.
